The sun is shining, the days are getting longer, everyone is sneezing a little more – it must be Spring!
Spring is traditionally a month that heralds hay fever, flowers blooming, and big clean outs of homes and houses alike. That’s all well and good, but we’re a web company – so we want you to think about cleaning up your website!!
Too often we see great websites that, after their initial launch, are left with little love or attention. A website should be updated as often as possible! Not only does Google love the fresh content, but it also gives your users a reason to keep coming back.
So we can hear you asking, how do I spring clean a website? The good news is that none of the below involves mopping, dusting, vacuuming, or scrubbing!!! We’re off to a good start….
Update your imagery
Lots of websites have either a rotating feature image, or a key image on their homepage – keep things fresh by designing a new one! This relatively minor update can very simply change the whole appearance of a website. Perhaps use the new image to draw attention to a special offer, or maybe to promote your most popular content? If you have the skills to do this in-house, that’s great. If not, get in touch with your web designer to discuss something visually engaging.
Refresh that content
Now is a great time to read through all of your content and make sure it is up to date. You’d be surprised at how quickly content can become dated! Sometimes it can help to print off pages and read them away from your computer – as mistakes that we miss on the screen can be easier to pick up on paper. But it’s not just about rehashing existing content – what new content can you add to your site? What has happened recently in your industry that is of interest to your clients or customers? This could be a great opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, or at the very least to provide your website visitors with some fresh content.
Plug in that Social Media channel
With all the new social media outlets becoming available, you might have recently setup a profile on one for your business? Make sure it’s added to your website at least in the form of an icon in the footer so your users can connect with you. Better yet, see if you can have a Twitter feed or Facebook platform installed within your website. This will not only let your users engage with you, but it will also provide an interactive element on your website!
Review your website statistics
Quite often we have Google Analytics installed on our websites, but we do nothing more than login and check to see how many visitors we’ve had. We encourage you to delve deeper and see what insights you can reveal!
From your left menu, select Mobile and see what percentage of your visitors is viewing your site on a mobile device. Given the rise in internet browsing on mobile devices, you should see an increase in this traffic over the last 12 months. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about a mobile site?
If you’re wondering how you can drive more traffic to your website, maybe it’s time to undertake a complete Online Marketing Audit? DBG has a complete audit and strategy service that provides a great overview of where your site is at, and some effective strategies to implement to help it work harder for you.
These are just some basic starting points – what we want you to do is to take a step back and look at your online presence as a whole. How is it looking compared to that of your competition? What else can be done to make your company stand out from the crowd? And most importantly – are you giving your website visitors a reason to either make contact with you, or to continue visiting your site on a regular basis?